What if one test could bring happiness back to a family?

Parents have a primal instinct to protect their children, especially when faced with circumstances that threaten to separate them. But when instinct isn't enough, we have tools to help keep their families safe.

Brenda was carrying her three-week-old daughter to a doctor's appointment when two women snatched baby Angela from her arms and disappeared into the streets of Guatemala. Two months later Angela was found, but Brenda and her husband couldn't prove their parentage through documentation. Using the AmpFℓSTR® Identifiler® Direct DNA test kit from Life Technologies, a lab confirmed, with 99.9% certainty, that Angela had found her rightful home.

What if you could create your own medical miracles?

When a 30-year-old woman's trachea collapsed from tuberculosis in a Barcelona hospital, her doctors turned to a new transplant method.

Rather than removing her lung, surgeons successfully reconstructed her windpipe from her own stem cells. Various cell culture media from Life Technologies were used in the process to grow and culture her stem cells. The stem cells were washed prior to manipulation to remove trace amounts of media. A functional airway gave the woman new hope and the opportunity to lead a normal life.

What if the world's fuel sources are actually growing?

As the world's population grows, our increasing demand for fuel escalates environmental, financial, and civil pressures. Naturally, we joined in the quest to accelerate the discovery of sustainable solutions.

Associate scientist Adi Ramon of SG Biofuels, Inc., a bioenergy crop company, worked with Life Technologies to sequence the Jatropha curcas plant to 100x coverage using the SOLiD® 4.0 System. The resulting data revealed key traits for the oilseed-producing, nonedible crop, including drought and pest resistance, and the ability to thrive in locations not desirable for food crops—making it a potential high-yield, low-cost source for next-generation biofuels.